


The Sound of Silence

by invincible_summer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A sliver of hope, Angst, Azkaban, Background Character Self-Harm (implied), Past Character Death, Past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Sirius Black in Azkaban, Sirius Black-centric, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:44:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invincible_summer/pseuds/invincible_summer
Summary: There are no such things as “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” here. Azkaban is an abyss, and he can only hope for a swift death.





	The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language (I apologize for any mistake you may find).
> 
> Just in case you haven't read the tags: there will be mentions of suicidal thoughts, past characters death and self-harm (implied).

Time does not exist here. They’re all trapped in an everlasting and crushing second of misery. Most of them go mad, and their hymn, a mix of screams and frantic whispers, infest the halls. Though those bleak sounds are fuelled with unspeakable violence and despair, they can never keep the silence away. There is nothing but death in Azkaban.

The first day he spends there, he does not make a noise and remains on the floor of his cell; his body a simple extension of the stone wall. His empty eyes are fixed on a small crack on his left. He does not notice the scratches that surround it, does not hear the rattling sounds coming from the cell next to his. He is a motionless mass of skin, flesh and bones; dead to a world that will never welcome him again.

Through the small window of his cell, the grey sky cast a gloomy light on his prisoner’s uniform. He’s not the first to wear it: the shirt is already well worn and the hems of the pants are shredded. He’s a dying man wearing a dead man’s rags.

Night’s about to fall when a Dementor opens his door to bring him food. He’s been cold all day, but now, as the creature gets closer and closer, he actually feels the warmth being sucked right out of his body.

He does not eat anything. Does not even look at the dirty glass of water set in front of him. Soon enough, it’s all gone, and he’s left with nothing but himself and the ghosts dancing in his mind. This is all his fault. If he had shut his mouth… If he had not convinced them to use that damn rat as Secret Keeper…

There is no denying it. He may not have killed them, may not have betrayed them, but they still died. There is no point in claiming his innocence for the crimes he’s been imprisoned for. Not when he knows that he is to blame for James and Lily’s deaths.

They’re gone. They really are.

* * *

He keeps seeing their vacant eyes and limp bodies in the wreak that used to be their home. He wants to shake them, yell at them till they come back. But they won’t. They never will. He does not even know what happened to Harry after he left him with Hagrid. He can’t think about that.

Sometimes, a small voice fills his head: “What did you do, Padfoot?” Sometimes, it’s Moony’s, sometimes, it’s Prongs’. It’s never Lily’s, but he always feels her eyes on him, begging for explanations. Truth is, there is nothing to explain. He trusted the wrong person and distrusted someone who is now condemned to loneliness and hopelessness in a world that no longer makes any sense.

The gap between his past and his present, between James and Lily’s lives and deaths is simply incomprehensible. He cannot reconcile these two universes. He refuses to. There can be no links between the life he knew and the hell he is going through nor between who he was and what he’ll become.

* * *

He tries to keep his mind blank, tries to focus on stupid things like the disturbing color of the floor or the thumping of his own heart. (That sound grounds him in that absurd reality.) He seldom succeeds. Thoughts and memories always prey on him, and as they tear him apart, he somehow manages not to drown in the tears and the blood of his fallen friends.

The rat is always there, nibbling his weariness away, squeaking in his ear and biting through his bones. He can never escape Wormtail. Whenever he lets himself think of James, Remus and Lily, of those lost days of bliss, the rat creeps in his head and ruins everything.

He can hear James saying that the rat is spending a few days in France and that he won’t be able to join them at the Potter’s, that summer. He can see Remus helping him with his DADA homeworks and Lily handing him a newborn Harry, a look of pure happiness on her face.

Wormtail’s shadow leaves stains everywhere.

He’s got nothing left: no friends, no family, no memory untainted. No freedom. No privacy. No wand. No future. There are no such things as “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” here. Azkaban is an abyss, and he can only hope for a swift death.

All that he can hold on to, all that keeps him sane, is the knowledge of his own innocence. It’s not much, it’s barely enough, but it’s all that he has. More often than not, he believes himself to be as guilty as he is innocent. He does not need the Dementors to be haunted by his own words and mistakes. Nonetheless, his jailors show him no mercy.

Reliving the worst moments of his life nearly pushes him over the edge, but for some reason he can’t explain to himself, he is not willing to give up. There is little he can do. However, turning into Padfoot does give him a small reprieve.

At this point, he does not know if he’s trying to keep himself alive as punishment or in the impossible hope that he’ll be free someday. In any case, he’s still breathing, and he hasn’t lost his mind yet. It would be so easy to let himself go, though.

* * *

Every now and then, he stands up and looks through the window. There is not much to see. The sky is always clouded, grey or completely dark; the sun, the moon and the stars are so dimmed that he wonders if they are truly there. When there’s a full moon, he stays up all night, looking at some invisible point, light years away from this place.

Moony’s out there. Alone. Alive. Sirius can’t bring himself to imagine any other possibility. He wants to believe that Remus is happy, he really does. He just _knows_ that it’s not the case. On a particularly “good” day, he even dares to think that Remus is raising Harry in a cozy cottage, close to the sea. It’s foolish, completely ridiculous really, but for an instant the pain lessens. The sound of Remus’ laugh rings in his ears, and he can almost feel his hand on his cheek.

Then, he cries, as he hasn’t cried since he’s been brought here, because even if that was possible, Harry would still be an orphan, and him, a prisoner serving a life sentence. It always comes back to the simple and unbearable fact that James and Lily are gone.

He cannot move on. There is nothing to move on to. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. His cell is overcrowded with ghosts and a void that threatens to consume him. His days are filled with meaningless and repetitive events. This constant immobility is one of the most terrible things about Azkaban; in some ways, it’s worse than reliving all his sufferings. His body is slowly wasting away, but he does not get to grow up, just to grow old, wither and die.

He is not someone anymore: he’s a meal Dementors can feast on and nothing more.

* * *

He does not dare to speak out loud. Hearing his own voice would make everything dreadfully real. So he apologizes to James, Lily, Harry and Remus in his head, over and over again until he’s completely exhausted. He also apologizes to James’ parents for getting their son killed. It feels right and it gives him something to focus on. Something better than a bloody rat with a missing toe.

He eventually finds himself paying more attention to the noises coming from the other cells. Being reminded that he is not the only living soul in that pit soothes him, to some extent. He’s well aware that these noises are filled with rage, anguish and madness, but they make him feel less forlorn. One day, he hears a serie of very loud bangs, a woman shrieking and, then, an eerie quietness. He has no way to find out what went on in that woman’s cell, so he tries to recreate the scene in his head.

In one of his dire scenarios, the woman dies after banging her head repeatedly on her cell’s door. In one of his few optimistic ones, she escapes, by breaking the protective spells cast around her cell’s windows, and flies away in her animagus form. Sirius thinks of countless scenarios, but in every single one of them, the woman is freed from this place, at last.

For the first time since he’s been convicted, he allows himself to think of a freedom that can be won through something else than death. It’s not a happy thought, but it’s a new one. It almost feels as if a new day has dawned. Almost.

* * *

On the night of the next full moon, he does something absolutely inane: he howls. He does not care if it’s pointless and he definitely does not give a damn about looking mad.  The silence’s overwhelming and he misses the Marauders ( _not_ the rat) deeply. He misses James’ energetic hugs and Remus’ kisses and caresses. It’s been years since anyone showed him love and talked to him. So he howls and pretends that Moony can hear him, wherever he is, and that he longs for him, too. There’s nothing more freeing than knowing his voice is leaving this cell, flowing over the sea in the windy night. Tonight, he gets to fly underneath the stars, with Prongs and Moony by his side.

In that short moment, Sirius does not feel like a dying man. In fact, he doubts he’s ever felt more alive. The exhilaration brought by this small triumph is short lived, but it hardly matters. Even if he can’t truly defeat the sound of silence, even if he must bend and lose, he can still fight when he finds the strength to.

He may be trapped and powerless, but he _is_ alive and, perhaps, that makes all the difference in the world.

 

_The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion._

\- Albert Camus -


End file.
